Touch-enabled

With Apple bringing a few user interface elements found in its iOS mobile operating system to its upcoming OS X Lion desktop operating system, Microsoft is taking a similar tack for its Windows 8 OS. Previewed last week at the D9 Conference, the next generation of the Windows operating system borrows heavily from Windows Phone 7 by replacing the traditional Windows Start menu with a tile-based Start screen that provides a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps on the system. Read More

It’s truly touching news... no sooner do we hear about the pressure-sensitive artificial skin created at UC Berkeley, than fellow Californians at Stanford University announce that they have also created such a material. While Berkeley’s skin relies on carbon nanotubes to detect pressure, however, Stanford’s skin utilizes a thin rubber sheet made up of tiny pyramids. It is reportedly so sensitive that it can “feel” the weight of a butterfly. Read More

Touch-screen interfaces have already usurped traditional buttons on a range of mobile devices that boast a larger screen size and/or smaller form factor by doing away with a wide range of buttons or dedicated keypad. Now buttons of all sorts on all sorts of devices are under assault. Just last week Apple declared war on mouse buttons, and now hearing technology company, Starkey Laboratories, has taken aim at fiddly hearing aid buttons with its "Sweep Technology" touch-based interface for hearing aids. Read More

HP has burst forth and launched a range of multi-touch computing products comprising three new TouchSmart PCs and a fully-functional interactive 42-inch HD digital signage display, the HP LD4200. The company has also upgraded its multi-touch notebook range with new touch features. Read More

TVs are no longer dumb receivers sitting in the corner of the lounge, displaying whatever trash the networks have decided to cram down our throats. Nowadays, a TV is just as likely to be hooked up to a home theater PC (HTPC) for playing games, accessing media content stored on a hard disk, or surfing the Internet. For more complex tasks like that, the humble remote starts to look a little underdone. That's where remote controls on steroids, such as the GlideTV Navigator, come in. It combines the functionality of a keyboard, mouse and AV remote control in one distinctive-looking unit that fits in the palm of your hand. Read More

Light Blue Optics (LBO) has received an injection of funds to further its development of, among other things, a holographic laser projection technology. The big news is that this technology can be touch-enabled, meaning any flat surface, such as a table, can be instantly transformed into a touch-sensitive display, eliminating the need for a touch screen and allowing users to directly interact with multimedia content. Read More

Due for its first public showing next week at EcoFocus in New York is the next-generation MSI Wind Top AE1900 desktop PC, a touch-enabled all-in-one PC with 18.5” widescreen and surround sound. It'll be interesting to try the Wind Top with its touch-enabled applications and webcam-optimized motion capture games, but we suspect that the ergonomics involved in continually lifting one's arms to touch the screen will soon kill the novelty value and users will be plugging in the color-matched keyboard and mouse that comes with it. One day, no doubt, all PCs will come without a keyboard – don't throw the keyboard and mouse away just yet though. Read More